Data acquisition system for the MuLan muon lifetime experiment

We describe the data acquisition system for the MuLan muon lifetime experiment at Paul Scherrer Institute. The system was designed to record muon decays at rates up to 1 MHz and acquire data at rates up to 60 MB/s. The system employed a parallel network of dual-processor machines and repeating acquisition cycles of deadtime–free time segments in order to reach the design goals. The system incorporated a versatile scheme for control and diagnostics and a custom web interface for monitoring experimental conditions.